1. Be civil. Not everyone on this forum is at the same level of knowledge. Each person’s post may contain their opinion. You should not belittle, make fun of or otherwise deride your fellow forum members, even in jest. This forum has a zero-tolerance policy on Personal Attacks (on Forum Users as well as personalities or meteorologists - working for AccuWeather or not). If you have an issue with someone, please send a civil "PM" (private message - click on their username). Anyone engaging in Personal Attacks via Posting, Sig Files, or PMs (Personal Messages) will be moderated (meaning that a moderator will have to approve each thing that they say) or banned from the system.

1.a. Report Abuse. If you see something inappropriate, click on the "Report Abuse" button on the Forums. Our moderators will remove the item if they believe it goes against our Terms & Conditions. For Facebook or the Photo Gallery, email weathermatrix @ accuweather.com.

1.b. Don’t Feed The Trolls! These people post inflammatory items specifically to get you to reply and start a fight on the Forums. The best practice is to ignore them and Report (see 1.a.)

2. Stay on topic! We have over 20 different Forums on subjects ranging all the way from Current Weather to Non-Weather. Topics or replies which do not belong will be moved elsewhere without notice to the author. If you want to chat with a user about something personal and off-topic, please use the Private Message system (click on their username to send them a message).

2.b. Before opening a new topic, Check to see if someone else is already talking about your subject. Topics which are redundant will be merged without notice to the author.

3. DON’T YELL, PLEASE! Did you know? Typing in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is considered YELLING on the Internet. Capitalizing (or using bold or large fonts) occasionally for emphasis is fine, but your entire post should used mixed case and normal fonts.

4. Remember our Community includes amateur weather forecasters - anyone can post here. You shouldn't expect this board to contain forecasts which are as accurate as the ones from our meteorologists on AccuWeather.com, and you shouldn't use this information for decision making purposes.

5. Weather Photographs can be posted here in the Forums but we encourage you to also post them our Photo Gallery or our Facebook Page, so that they might be seen by AccuWeather.com News Writers and Meteorologists who don't look at the Forums.

7. Before posting a map or link from another company or the government, keep in mind that AccuWeather.com has a wealth of weather data and maps, and we’d love for you to use it in your discussions. You can also use images from AccuWeather.com Professional or Premium, or small quotes from bloggers there, provided you are not providing the data consistently or often.[/i]

8. Use the View New Posts link to see what you’ve missed on the Forums. This will save you time by keeping you up-to-date on all postings from all Forums since you last logged in. See our Help section for a tutorial.

9. If you see a technical problem with the Forums or AccuWeather.com, click on the “Contact Us” button at the bottom of your page to contact AccuWeather, then post your issue in the Help/Suggestions forum, to help us keep track of how many users are experiencing the issue, and give you information on resolution. Simply replying to a topic will not work, because the forums are not monitored by people who can fix technical problems.

10. Because you are accessing these Forums on a private commercial server, "Freedom of Speech" does not apply here. Some topics are forbidden, including swearing. This list also includes things that are against AccuWeather.com’s Terms and Conditions. Some of these prohibited topics might surprise you.

11. No Wishcasting: Our Community is not a place to post "theoretical" or "perfect storm" predictions. "Wishcasting" is hoping for extreme weather outside of the consensus forecast, often beyond the typical computer forecast model accuracy limit (including "bittercasting" (which is saying "It won't happen" with no reason). If you can't support your forecast with the parameters of at least one forecast model, or quotes from other forecasters, you shouldn't post it. If you are going to explain your forecast by citing other websites / meteorologists that agree with you, you MUST source them (see #16).

12. Don’t repost fake or altered versions of other people’s stuff, even as a joke (for example, altering and reissuing a text forecast or map from another Forum user, meteorologist, or institution (NWS, AccuWeather, other companies). And please don't post "fake" news stories or weather forecasts of your own, even if you think they are funny.

13. Don’t create multiple accounts - these are denied automatically by the system on signup, and doing this can cause all of your account information to be permanently banned from the forum.

14. Advertising is not allowed here. In thanks for us providing this service, we ask that you don't use your Signature file to promote services which compete with AccuWeather.com, including our Forums. Links to competing forums and sites will be removed at the discretion of the Administrator. Please don't PM other users to ask them to visit your site or service. (An Exception to this rule are AccuKidz Weather Teams).

15. Please speak English. Because we moderate the Forums to keep inappropriate posts offline, we need all posts to be in a language that all of our Moderators can read.

16. When you post someone else's text, it must be sourced. This means if you are quoting an article from the web, you must provide the URL and put the quote in QUOTE tags. If the source is not on the web, it still must be referenced. WE PREFER YOU DO NOT POST FULL TEXT from articles that are already available on the web -- in fact it is illegal to do so if it is copyrighted. Plagiarism is not tolerated here. Images posted must have their source printed on them if you are altering or rebranding them.

17. Special Note To Kids & Parents: The AccuWeather.com general Forums are not recommended for children. We have a special Kids Weather Forum which is completely moderated (every post or reply is approved by a moderator).

18. Bumping is not permitted. "Bumping" or replying to a topic with "me too" or other short text, in an attempt to get the topic ranked higher, is not allowed. Neither is any sort of posting that increments the poster's post count with nonsense posts.

20. No Proxy Servers: Please access our Forums through a non-proxy server for the security of our Members.

21. NWS Text Advisories shall not be posted in full or in part by any person UNLESS...

- They are Quoted in part OR Codeboxed, and the poster adds additional maps or commentary- They are concerning the county in which the person resides- They are a Tornado Warning containing a non-radar, spotter report of a tornado

The reason for this guideline concerns the number of NWS text products - 15,000 per day, the timeliness of them, and their availability elsewhere.

22. Violation of any of these rules will result in Moderation or a Lifetime Ban from all AccuWeather.com Communities (specific rules for the Forums are set forth in the Warning thread.